When people argue that sanctions will act as deterrents, they usually hypothesise that the introduction of a sanction will reduce the occurrence of the incidents they seek to deter.
This, presumably, is the theory behind the DFE policy that parents can, and in their view should, be fined for taking their child out of school on a term time holiday, irrespective of the child’s attendance overall. You may recall that this issue was tested in the Courts last year with the High Court finding that the parent, Jon Platt, had no case to answer for non-payment of school absence fines. Tomorrow (31 January 2017) DFE will be seeking to overturn this judgement in the Supreme Court.
As someone working in education I know how important it is for learning that children attend school regularly. My own daughters have frequently been proud recipients of certificates celebrating 100% attendance over a term or a year – although as a working mother I must confess that this has sometimes been as much as my need to get them out of the house so I can go to work as it has been a reflection of their dedication, or mine!
But for all sorts of reasons I feel deeply uncomfortable about the widespread use of fines for all but the most persistent cases of school absence, not least because of doubts about whether fines actually work.
2013 saw a major change to DFE guidance on authorising absence, removing headteacher discretion to authorise holidays in term time in all but exceptional circumstances. Since then, as one might expect, the number of fines issued for unauthorised absence has increased dramatically, from 52,370 in 2012/13 to 98,259 in 2013/14 and to 151,125 in 2014/15, the latest year for which information is available.
So has the increasing use of fines put parents off taking a holiday in term time? It would appear not. The latest DFE statistics, published in May 2016, show that between Autumn 2014 and Autumn 2015 the proportion of time lost to term-time holidays remained exactly the same, at 0.3%.
Behavioural economics might help us to understand why. A famous study by Uri Gneezy and Aldo Rustichini looked at the behaviour of the parent collecting their children from day-care in Haifa, Israel. The day-care centres closed at 4pm. Most parents picked their children up promptly, but each day some parents would be late, relying on the goodwill of the staff to look after their child until they arrived.
An experimental approach saw six of the ten day centres introduce a small fine for parents who were more than ten minutes late, whist the remaining four had no fine. The effects were not what one might have anticipated. In day centres where the fines were introduced, tardiness increased, with lateness levels settling out at around twice the levels that were seen before the fines were introduced. No change in lateness was seen at the day centres that did not introduce the fine.
Why was this? Dr Gneezy hypothesises that without a fine, parents are concerned about the guilt and embarrassment of having to meet and apologise to the teacher that has been inconvenienced, providing a strong incentive to get to the day centre on time. The introduction of the fine changes the transaction from a social to a financial one, with parents seeing the payment of a fine as a way of buying an additional service rather than putting out an individual teacher.
It is easy to see parallels with the term-time holiday question. In a pre-fine era the guilt associated with knowing that their child’s absence may mean additional work for the teacher, or being seen as selfish by other parents, provided a reasonable deterrent. But with a potential fine in place, parents can reassure themselves that they are ‘paying for the privilege’ of taking their child out of school on term time, and consideration becomes more narrowly financial: is the cost of a term-time holiday plus fine more or less than a holiday during the school break?
Interestingly the Department for Education have recently been recruiting a team of behavioural scientists. It will be fascinating to see whether and how this team affects the Department’s approach to seeking to change the behaviour of parents, teachers and pupils in future.
Alison Critchley
Chief Executive, RSA Academies
Follow Alison on Twitter @Ali_Critchley
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Schools no longer are for whole child education, but, as stated by a Government Minister " the economic wellbeing of society" so that realised its no wonder big brother approaches foster fines for children missing school. We need a society that values the uniqueness of individuals not a conveyor belt of learning what someone believes is important. A child accompanying their parents on an international visit to relatives in term time may well receive a richer and deeper education than if they stayed at school!
I'll follow you on twitter, i do really like your article
Thanks for it
Dennis
Behavioural Economics can only work if people behave in predictable ways. People are not uniformly the same, so incentives will work differently with different people. This is well understood in industry where people can often negotiate a bundle of incentives which suit their circumstances.
Education is unbelievably complex, if you have a large comprehensive you can be dealing at any time with parents who are: drug dealers; drug takers; recently bereaved; recently divorced or getting divorced; enduring domestic abuse; recent immigrants to the UK who speak no English; barely coping with mental health issues; physically impaired and so on. Fining them is yet more abusive, alienating behaviour that makes it difficult for them to become a valued member of the group and makes it even more difficult to cope.
My experience is that most people know why they are not coping and talking to them and finding solutions to the problem is the only way to change things, however, for many of the poor they really are barely managing and the rich should walk in their shoes for a bit and understand the grinding strain of modern life before condemning people so much.
And actually having a cheeky break away as a family is a good thing! I used to think school was important and then I became the Mother of a visually impaired child and I discovered that a school that is not in tune with the child's needs is a highly toxic experience that can do long-term damage to the child.